Believing Frank, though, did not mean I was deaf to the whispers that have swirled like dead leaves around this house for all the years I have lived in it, and though I tried not to, I always heard Bessie's voice in my mind, telling me that I would know when it was time to read these pages.
Frank killed Bessie.
I believe that, just as I believe he killed Francesca's sister-his own daughter!
I thought-hoped?-that all the terrible things I have dreamed over the years were only nightmares filled, with demons and rituals from which I would awaken screaming.
After my nightmares I would hear the rumors, though no one ever spoke them to my face.
So many babies-ltttle girls all-vanishing in the night without a trace.
I always told myself the children never came to play with Phillip and George because of other things, but after reading these pages, I know the truth.
My sons had no friends because the other children's parents were afraid for them.
It seems that they were right.
Phillip must have known, too, for he left when he was fifteen and has not come back-I fear I shall never see him again…
I do not know what the future holds, though I am sure that I, like Francesca and her little daughter Eulalie, will never be able to escape this place. I do not know about Francy's husband. Abraham Lincoln Cumber-land seems a good man, but surely he must hate all of us.
1 November 1937
Abe Cumberland was hanged last night. The men came for him at midnight, wrapped in sheets, their torches filling the air with smoke. It was like one of my nightmares come to life, and when George pointed to the rooms above the carriage house where Abe and Francy live with their little Eulalie, I screamed and screamed, hoping to wake up.
I did not.
Instead I was condemned to watch little Eulalie-who is only five-as my own son helped the mob to lynch her father.
They said Abe had stolen a baby, and killed her.
I do not believe it, for I saw that infant die in one of my dreams, and I saw my son holding the knife above her little breast. But even now I cannot bring myself to speak any of it aloud.
22 January 1950
Eulalie Cumberland's child will be born soon. If it is a girl, I fear for what my son might do. I-
AS THE PAIN STRUCK HER CHEST, THE PEN IN ABIGAIL CONWAY'S HAND SKIDDED ACROSS THE PAGE, LEAVING A JAGGED LINE THAT WOULD BE THE LAST MARK SHE MADE IN THE WORLD. SHE CRIED OUT AS THE SECOND STAB OF PAIN LASHED THROUGH HER, SHOOTING DOWN HER LEFT ARM INTO HER FINGERTIPS. AS THE AGONY MOMENTARILY RECEDED, THE DOOR TO HER ROOM OPENED AND HER DAUGHTER-IN-LAW HURRIED IN.
"MOTHER CONWAY?" CORA ASKED ANXIOUSLY. "WHAT IS IT? ARE YOU ALL RIGHT?"
ABIGAIL STRUGGLED AGAINST THE SURGE OF PAIN, AND SHOOK HER HEAD. HER HANDS TREMBLING, SHE CLOSED THE BIBLE THAT LAY OPEN ON THE DESK IN FRONT OF HER, AND REPEATED THE SAME WORDS TO CORA THAT BESSIE DELACOURT HAD SPOKEN TO HER THIRTY-EIGHT YEARS EARLIER. "YOU'LL KNOW WHEN TO READ IT," SHE WHISPERED AS ONCE AGAIN THE HOT KNIVES SLICED HER. "YOU'LL KNOW."
AS CORA CONWAY RELIEVED HER OF THE BURDEN OF THE BIBLE, ABIGAIL SLUMPED IN THE CHAIR. DARKNESS CLOSED AROUND HER AND SHE WAS FINALLY RELEASED FROM THE AGONY OF HER RUPTURING HEART, AND THE TERROR THAT HAD RULED HER LIFE. SHE DESERTED HER BODY GRATEFULLY; WHATEVER ETERNITY HELD FOR HER COULD NOT BE AS TERRIBLE AS THE YEARS SHE HAD SPENT IN THE CONWAY HOUSE.
"So much evil," Monsignor Devlin muttered as he finished the last entry, which had been written by Cora Conway a few days before her husband hanged himself, and her baby-along with Eulalie Cumberland-had vanished. Cora herself had done little more than describe Abigail's last moments, and add a few cryptic words of her own:
Perhaps Eulalie's magic can end the evil of the Conways. I doubt it, though, for I often wonder if it is not the Conways who are evil, but this house itself.
And that was the end. Except for the missing pages, the dark history of the family was complete.
As he closed the Bible, Monsignor Devlin felt someone behind him, and turned to find Father MacNeill standing close to his chair.
"So Jake is one of them," the younger priest said softly. "It's no wonder he hates them, is it?"
Monsignor Devlin shook his head. "Nor can we blame him, can we?" Not waiting for any reply, he went on, "But we still don't know how it started-where it began."
Father MacNeill was silent for a moment, and when he spoke, his voice was grim. "'The work of the Devil,'" he said. "That's what Jake called it tonight at the meeting. 'The work of the Devil.' Maybe he's right."
Monsignor Devlin sighed, wishing he could argue with Father MacNeill. But he could not, for every syllable the younger man had spoken rang with truth.
Halloween
CHAPTER 30
Father MacNeill barely slept. When the first light of the sun crept through the window of his small room on the second floor of the rectory, he wished he could pull his single thin blanket over his head and hide from the day. But he resisted temptation, despite his certainty that he would find no more rest in the brilliance of the morning than in the darkness of the night that had finally passed, so upset had he been by the last entries he and Monsignor Devlin had read in the Bible Cora Conway had entrusted to her last confessor.
The Bible that was itself a confession of the sins of the Conways.
But more than those chronicles of ancient wrongs had kept him awake. Through those early hours when sleep refused to come, he'd also had the uneasy sense that somewhere beyond the walls of the rectory, evil was afoot. He tried to tell himself it was nothing more than a reaction to the horrors of which he'd read, but the feeling stayed with him. Several times he left his bed to peer out into the darkness, searching for the source of the unease that kept him from sleep.
There had been nothing.
Nothing, at least, that he could see or hear, save for the flickering of a few jack-o'-lanterns left lit on porches or in darkened windows, and the plaintive hooting of an owl hunting in the darkness.
Yet he'd known that somewhere, concealed in the blackness, some evil was hidden. Each time he turned away from the window, he dropped to his knees in prayer-prayer that brought him no comfort. The hours seemed to stretch on forever in an endless cycle of searching, praying, and tossing restlessly on the thin pallet that was all he allowed himself for a mattress.
Now, he rose, stretched the knots of tension from his arms, pulled on his clothes, and went down to the kitchen. Putting on a pot of coffee, he went to the front door, where the Sunday newspaper would be waiting. As he was bending down to pick up the paper, something in the periphery of his vision caught his attention. The unease of the last hours flooding back to him, Father MacNeill straightened up, scanning the gardens around the rectory, the churchyard, and the cemetery. Nothing seemed amiss. But as he looked at the cemetery a second time, he saw it.
One of the mausoleums-one whose very presence had always offended him-didn't look quite right.